


Anniversaries

by RarePairFairy



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Coffee Shop, Domestic Fluff, Jealousy, M/M, Marriage, Rare Pairings, Road Trip, Slice of Life, Snapshots, backwards storytelling, cabin by a lake, other pairings are purely background, pick a trope any trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 22:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9349847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RarePairFairy/pseuds/RarePairFairy
Summary: Some important days in the lives of Leonard McCoy and Montgomery Scott. You don't have to change your name to grow old(er) with someone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I bashed this out between midnight and two in the morning forgive meeeee

**Ten Years**

 

They hadn’t done a road trip before. Scotty’s job had been keeping him away from home for the better part of a year and whenever he was free, work began piling up for Leonard or else he was on call and had to rush off. When they were both off, it was for never more than a weekend. It was like the universe and all of Starfleet were conspiring to keep them apart.

‘Superstitious goat,’ Leonard grunted, when Scotty said as much.

‘You’re one to talk,’ Scotty replied affably, fingering the dinged gold ring on Leonard’s finger. Leonard refused to take it off even at bedtime. Scotty suspected it was a once-bitten thing. Leonard was a divorcee when they met, and since they got hitched, always so precious about his ring.

Dumb luck and maybe a little mercy from their workmates gave them a guaranteed fortnight when their “diamond jewellery” anniversary reared its head. They agreed to go up the coast to their old honeymoon spot. It would have been much faster to take a shuttle, but Leonard hadn’t driven in a long time and was feeling nostalgic about wheels on the ground. Scotty still preferred his ships. There wasn’t anything exciting under the hood of Leonard’s uncle’s old-style pickup.

Before long they both remembered that their joints got stiff, so stopping at each town became less of a possibility and more of a non-negotiable.

Still, it was nice to pretend at being young and foolish again, a pair of boys on the road with the windows down and nothing to think about except the immediate. Which lane, which turnoff, which café off the highway looked promising.

They idled away the quiet moments with the kind of casual conversation that comes after living together a long time. Whenever the pickup needed a little encouragement from Scotty, or when they took the wrong turnoff and had to find their way back, they found a strange middle-ground between being marriage veterans and being newlyweds again. Passion didn’t flare up the way it used to, but it was _there_ , dormant like a volcano. Little rumbles, hints of light and heat. Scotty kept his free hand on Leonard’s knee while he was driving, and when it was his turn at the wheel, Leonard sought out Scotty’s hand to hold. No road head, though, even if the image crossed their minds in the early morning while they were still sleep-addled and a little fanciful. They were middle-aged, not stupid.

Fiddling with the speakers, Leonard tuned in to a broadcast that featured bagpipes of all things, to their opposing consternation and delight, and so went by the rest of the afternoon before they had to stop and book into a hotel two-thirds of the way to their destination.

The roaring, squealing instrument seemed to herald the evening’s bad news to Leonard, who had an instinct for sensing bad news even when there wasn’t any. Scotty was still feeling pleased enough when they parked and so had room for disappointment.

‘The Saturnalia is shut down for the month for repairs,’ Leonard told his husband as they unpacked their bags from where they’d been tucked away in the bed of the pickup. He had grabbed the PADD stashed in the glove compartment to check the weather, and discovered the news on the hotel’s message board. ‘A freak thunderstorm ripped up a tree by its roots and shot the wiring. Part of the roof got knocked in.’

They left the sad task of adjusting their anniversary plans till the morning. Scotty consoled himself by ranting about how the owners should have known better. Leonard was quiet, but Scotty could see the real dejection underneath his normal grim surface.

The hotel they stopped at was a quaint three-storey fashioned to resemble an old Earth style Brownstone, with vibrant orange nasturtiums and spider plants growing uncontrolled over the upper terrace and hanging over the railing. Oaks on either side shielded the building, diffusing the evening sunset to give the pale walls a soft glow. The windows on the bottom floor let out a cheery yellow light and a sign at the front advertised lowered off-season rates. The darkness of the upper storeys suggested there were very few other guests. It looked very family-owned and un-commercial.

‘It’ll do,’ Scotty muttered, but Leonard’s practiced eye could see the piqued interest in Scotty’s expression.

The lady behind the desk was old and wizened and friendly, and after overhearing about the Saturnalia, insisted on setting them up in the honeymoon suite.

‘It’s probably only for tonight,’ Leonard protested, but relinquished his complaints when Scotty gave his rear a gentle squeeze.

A young man who had the same friendly tone and brown eyes as the desk lady helped them carry their bags up the stairs, again despite Leonard’s protestations (“Dammit, I’m a grown man, not an invalid!”) and before long they were settled in to a respectably comfortable room. The window gave them a view of the rear enclosed courtyard, and when Scotty opened it they could barely hear any noise from the road. The old-fashioned wood panelling, decent kitchen and spacious ensuite bathroom made it feel homey and dissolved any remaining qualms Leonard had had over staying for what could well be more than one night.

The light coming in through the window was failing, so Leonard turned on the bedside lamp.

‘Good firm mattress at least,’ he said.

‘Aye. Reminds me a little of our dear old ship,’ Scotty said, venturing a little reminiscence of the first home they made together. He was always a sucker for The Good Old Days.

‘ _Your_ dear old ship, Monty,’ Leonard muttered fondly. ‘My terrifying rust bucket, hurtling through the galaxies at warp spin-the-wheel, see-what-number-we-land-on-today via Jim’s whims and pure chance.’

‘Careful you,’ Scotty said darkly, and without malice. ‘That rust bucket carried you around deep space for years in her gentle embrace. You ought to show her some appreciation.’

‘I appreciate that she let me off at the end of the tour,’ Leonard said. He was prodding now, stoking whatever spark had lit off earlier between them. Scotty knew it. He’d never take such talk from anyone else. They were sitting close on the mattress, leaning in to one another, breathing the same air, bathed in the same soft orange lamplight, knees and backs aching a little but it was mild.

The moment they got in the pickup and started driving, they were conscious of the fact that there would be no opportunity to fool around until they booked in somewhere. They weren’t ravenous men, didn’t have sex as often as they used to, but today. There was a pleasant little surprise hanging between them, that they had stuck it out for a whole decade and weren’t sick of each other. They were still in love, growing within it without growing apart, changing within it like sweet honey fermenting into heady mead, just as sweet and just as intoxicating. A decade, and they felt like newlyweds.

Leonard looked closely at the man whose face he knew better than his own. He followed the path of his eyes with his mouth, kissing Scotty’s lined brow, his slightly drooping eyelids and the wrinkled corners of his eyes. He felt his own thin lips and leathery jaw, coarse with stubble, grazing against the roughness of his husband’s cheek. He wondered if Scotty felt the way he did when their textures matched, and their mouths met.

Scotty had restless fingers. That was something which never changed, as long as they had known each other. Those fingers trailed through Leonard’s salt-and-pepper hair, followed the crease behind his ears to where lobe met thin skin, clutched at his neck, touched just under his chin, slid under the neckline of his shirt. They undid his buttons, the fly of his jeans, undressed them both, pushed and pulled and rubbed and pinched. Always restless, always touching, like Leonard was a piece of machinery and Scotty enjoyed knowing just how to fine-tune him, get him to grind.

But the living body was Leonard’s speciality, and when it came to working each other over, he had an advantage. He had an intimate knowledge of where to find nerves and how to get them singing with pleasure. Even after all these years he knew better how to exploit sensitive areas, had a better grasp of timing and rhythm, but Scotty was long past begrudging him for it.

They didn’t bother to shower off the sweat of the road. They were well accustomed to the taste of each other’s sweat and hunger. It was slow and ardent, punctuated with damp kisses. They only used their hands and mouths, didn’t try anything special. They changed positions only once, didn’t come together, and mostly they were silent. They were at ease.

 

*****

*****

*****

**Five Years**

 

Kirk and Spock got married, surprising no-one except for apparently Joanna, who was going through a stage and had complex ideas about tragic love. She had been convinced that the pair would waste away pining over each other, enough to bet a month of cleaning her room, even after Leonard explained that “wasting away via pining” was not medically sound.

Given the intersection of Leonard and Scotty’s five-year anniversary and Kirk and Spock’s honeymoon, some of the old Enterprise crew had taken it upon themselves to throw together a weekend getaway. It might have been romantic, Leonard thought, except that it was clearly a plot on behalf of the Sulus, Uhura, Jaylah, Chekov, M’Benga, Chapel and Keenser to throw a party and invite themselves.

He didn’t truly mind. He had Joanna for the holiday, and she and Demora were around the same age and got along like a house on fire. He was no longer bothered by the social magnetizing effect that married couples seemingly had on each other. He enjoyed spending time with the Sulus and the Kirks. Vulcan naming conventions didn’t allow for Jim to take Spock’s name, but Leonard figured that Jim liked it better this way, being able to flaunt Spock like a one-of-a-kind designer handbag, referring to him as “Mr Kirk”. Going by the light green flush whenever Jim did, Leonard didn’t think Spock minded much either. He knew they’d gotten bonded several weeks before they got married, plenty of time to be alone together away from well-meaning friends.

The group had a large cabin near a lake, a handful of miles up from the nearest town and down from a wildlife sanctuary. It was a dry, bright summer, perfect for sunburn and ice cream and laying side by side, just barely touching, listening to the birds.

The Sulus took the kids on a long walk around the lake looking for interesting local flora while Uhura, Jaylah and Chapel played cards, and M’Benga, Chekov and Keenser went out shopping. Leonard and Scotty spent the lazy morning having fervent, sticky sex, trying to be quiet and knowing in a weirdly erotic way that Kirk and Spock were two rooms down, probably doing the same thing.

The trip was good fun, and it was a worthy fifth-year anniversary party, even if mostly it was other things. Leonard had missed spending time with Jim now that they weren’t working on the same ship any more, and damned if he’d admit it, but he’d been missing Spock too. Chapel and M’Benga were running the medical bays on different ships and it felt like even longer since they’d sat down together and shared increasingly unfeasible anecdotes about godawful patients, accidental cures, bizarre new STIs and bodily fluids. Scotty, Jaylah and Keenser found a broken projector set along with other bits and pieces stashed under the cabin (he didn’t bother asking what they’d been doing down there) and managed to fix it and get it set up, and they all stayed up late watching awful adventure holovids and, after the young ones went to bed, inventing drinking games to go along with them.

In all honesty, it _was_ romantic, or at least romantic enough to have an impression on some of the singles. Uhura and Chapel slipped away sometime in the night and Leonard was sure he saw Uhura slip out of Chapel’s room and return to it with a tray full of eggs on toast on the final morning. Jaylah and Chekov had an intense tipsy discussion about a brilliant and lovely betazoid whom Chekov had met and how it was imperative that he get his act together. Demora and Joanna giggled hysterically in a corner until Jaylah, whom they admired intensely, gave them a stern look and lectured them on the importance of respecting emotion, which Spock pointedly said nothing about while he let Jim hold his hand.

Leonard had a brief burst of sorrow at the end of the holiday. He missed these people. He missed the Enterprise. Memories washed over him tinted with the carefree pleasure of the weekend, like the perfect shore leave he’d never had, making him wish for just one more mission around the galaxy even though he knew he would hate it and complain about it the whole way through.

Scotty wrapped Leonard up in his arms, pressing his face to Leonard’s shoulder and sighing with him.

‘Bless ‘em, they’re a good bunch,’ he said, his accent just a little thicker than usual. ‘I’m bloody glad we don’t work with them anymore.’

 

*****

*****

*****

**One Year**

 

Scotty hadn’t returned to Aberdeen except for brief visits to a cousin’s wedding or old schoolmate’s funeral, and was feeling woefully underqualified to show Leonard the sights. He had his favourite bar, which had changed owners and menu since last time he was there, and his old haunts which were mostly rugby fields and corner stores. He knew his way more or less around the city, but he wanted to show Leonard around the same way Leonard and Joanna had been able to show him around Atlanta.

He had these little moments and he knew they were petty, but they were part of the fabric of the magical tapestry that was his relationship with Leonard McCoy and he just couldn’t pick them all out. Like that ongoing feud that still reared its head now and then, over who got to be the big spoon. So long as they didn’t talk about it and let it happen, it was fine, but on nights when they _both_ wanted to be the big spoon they invariably either argued or slept back to back.

Or worse, the problem of jealousy.

Leonard was his husband, but he was also Jim Kirk’s best friend. It was hard not to feel a little possessive when your spouse was emotionally intimate with Jim Kirk. Leonard would smile his little crooked smile that suggested he thought Scotty was being ridiculous, and say _Yes, but you have Keenser don’t you?_ And his husband would point out that Keenser didn’t blaze a trail of unrequited love and leave broken hearts in his wake. And then Leonard would sniff about how that would hardly matter unless Scotty thought Leonard was the type of married man to go chasing after pretty boys, and then Scotty would ask if Leonard thought Kirk was pretty, and then Leonard would say _sure, if he scrubs up and does something about those caterpillars he calls eyebrows_ , and it was usually around that stage of the well-worn conversation that one or both of them started giggling into their Scotch. But sometimes the insidious little fear was real, that one day Leonard would up and change his mind, because there was no way in hell Jim hadn’t thought about it and what if they both thought about it? In his least honourable moments Scotty would have day terrors about Leonard secretly pitying him, sticking around out of sheer marital loyalty whilst secretly pining over a mutually enamoured Kirk.

And it was moments like that, and moments like this, staring at a map of Aberdeen, that made Scotty feel not-quite-good-enough for his intelligent, ruggedly handsome, slightly younger husband.

He experienced a pang of guilt when Leonard sidled up behind him, stuffed his hands in Scotty’s front pockets and rested his chin on Scotty’s shoulder. He didn’t do such things often. Leonard was a hopeless romantic, but never in public. In public they seldom hugged, and god forbid Leonard accept a peck on the cheek even if no-one was looking. But in private, he’d plaster himself to Scotty like grease on an internal combustion engine, and their kisses were seldom just kisses.

But this was their first year. They’d made it, they had leave and they were able to spend it on Scotty’s home soil. They had a shuttle compartment all to themselves and they’d so far made ample use of the bed, the cramped shower, and two hours out of the three-hour long trip. Leonard was giddy with excitement to have his feet on solid ground, if you could call it giddy. His face was so used to scowling that even when he smiled it looked slightly demonic, though personally Scotty liked that. He liked every little shiver Leonard sent down his spine.

And Scotty wanted to reward that expectation with something nice, something good enough that Leonard wouldn’t feel let down about spending his well-earned leave bumming around a city he didn’t know with a local who didn’t even know where the gallery was.

 _Start with what you’re sure about_ , Scotty scolded himself, _and go from there_. That was how he fixed problems on board the Enterprise, and it was how he’d fix problems off of it. And there was one thing he was sure about; where to find good coffee.

He’d been very loosely keeping an eye on the best barista in Aberdeen since he first left for Starfleet Academy. The man was as old as sin and as crotchety as Leonard on a bad day, but he knew the difference between an espresso and a ristretto and he remembered the singular preferences of every regular he’d ever served, and Scotty was a regular despite almost always being in deep space or on a different planet. The man had worked in a total of about five different coffee shops over forty years. Scotty’s dad had been one of his regulars once upon a time, and his mum too.

So, Scotty pinpointed the coffee shop where he worked, and casually turned to his husband.

‘Want to sit down for a coffee when we arrive?’

The place was modestly quiet but presentable, not too shiny or posh but not too shabby either. The cakes were baked at home by the owners and brought in every morning and mid-afternoon, which Leonard liked. He had been missing food that didn’t come out of a replicator, though Scotty swore he couldn’t tell the difference. The old man was as wrinkled and cantankerous as Scotty remembered, and his coffee was, if anything, better.

Leonard took a sip of his long black and sat quietly for a moment, elbows leaning on the table, eyes almost shut. Then he glanced up and smiled at Scotty.

‘This place was a good choice, Monty.’

Scotty felt like he could see fireworks.

 

*

*

*

 

 

**Married**

 

They had their honeymoon at a beachside hotel called Saturnalia. The owners insisted with a kind of belligerent tiredness that no, it _was not_ a reference to the planet but to an ancient Roman festival, and dropped the explanation there as if they had given it far too many times. Once upon a time Scotty may have been irritated such terseness, but not this day. This day, he was invulnerable. All things in existence were immaculate and forgivable. His happiness expanded outward from himself, encasing him like an impenetrable shield, and it must have been contagious, for even the weary owners of Saturnalia, who appeared to have the worst luck, took a shine to the happy couple (their cook quit immediately preceding an important catering event, their cat was missing, their top floor bathroom had flooded, and their daughter had run off to join Starfleet, which wasn’t so bad, they said, but they missed her terribly).

Leonard was similarly cheerful, though it only showed to those who knew him well. His brusqueness was tempered and even his rants had a touch of feral joy to them. He complained about the sand at the beach and then let Joanna bury him up to his waist and turn him into a merman, and Scotty felt like he’d never loved him more.

And wasn’t that something, for Joanna to be there, even if it was just for the day after the wedding before she had to go back to school. She had been the flower girl. Whatever animosity had existed between Leonard and Jocelyn before, it was in the past, their mutual desire to move on and their subsequent discovery of new loves having softened their sharp edges. They had remembered what they’d liked about each other in the beginning, and in the haste of organizing this, reuniting Joanna with her father, they’d forged a kind of a friendship on new foundations.

Leonard had stood proud and with a small smile, as if he wasn’t overjoyed and overwhelmed to see his daughter again, to be able to be a father to her again. Scotty had been close enough to see the unshed tears shining in his eyes.

And Joanna was so _good_. She had her father’s no-bullshit attitude and fierce dedication all bottled up in a compact little freckled package, and once she decided that Scotty qualified as family, she treated him as such. There was no room left for awkwardness or wondering. Scotty knew she wasn’t his, but with every hour that passed, he wanted more and more to watch her grow up, to be a good influence, to be worthy of her trust and approval, to be worthy of being her stepdad.

He’d never thought he’d get married, not really. Even in the first few months of their relationship it didn’t cross his mind that maybe marriage would be on the cards. Even later down the line when he knew he wanted in for the long haul, he didn’t think about marriage. He’d thought of it as something religious people did, or people who needed their permanent relationship documented for legal purposes, or people who had big fancy traditional ideas about what marriage symbolized. For a little while, it frightened and offended him. It cheapened the bond they shared, he thought, to let other people, strangers and bureaucracy, bits of paper and little metal rings, slap a label on their relationship and make it “official”, because what then were they without it?

In the end, it had been Leonard on his knees that had done it. It was a sight Scotty’d seen plenty of times, often, lord have mercy, with them both in their uniforms, his trousers undone and halfway down his thighs, impatient and in a hurry because one of them had just finished a shift and the other was practically on his way out the door. It was a sight he’d seen, Leonard on his knees and healing a lieutenant in the field, dragging them back from the brink of death by their ears, sometimes in the middle of a firefight. Saving lives on the fly because that was what he did, that was why he was the chief medical officer of an exploration vessel, because he could meet a new species in the morning and be able to treat them by the afternoon.

Scotty had seen Leonard on his knees, mourning and working and searching and giving and worshipping, and he loved him. He wanted urgently to take all of his love and show it to Leonard who, deep down under his crusty exterior, craved something that he could hold on tight to. He wanted him to know, and he wanted everyone to know, everyone who glanced twice at Dr McCoy’s ass and murmured something to their friend as they walked off laughing, everyone who flirted with Leonard in the mess hall, everyone who surreptitiously checked Leonard’s left hand before offering him a drink. Most of all, he wanted Leonard to know. He wanted something tangible to show him when that brief shadow crossed his expression, every time they fought or were kept apart for long periods of time. He wanted an anchor to hold them together when circumstance or strangers tugged them apart.

So Scotty got down on one knee, and Leonard said yes.


End file.
